Sunday, February 21, 2016

is there an eco in here? not any more

Recoil in horror, readers, as the Electric Halibut LIIIIIIBRARY OF DEEEEEEAAAAATH claims another victim. This time it's Italian polymath Umberto Eco: novelist, philosopher, semiotician, literary critic, leg spin bowler, masseur, plasterer, surgeon, groovy cat, gentleman, scholar and acrobat. A formidable CV indeed, but one that did him no good: once I'd read The Name Of The Rose and posted a review to this blog, it was literally guaranteed that he was going to die at some unspecified point in the near, medium or distant future. And so it proved.

The roll call of those directly and specifically slaughtered by this blog, therefore, now reads as follows:

Eco's death doesn't affect the stats much, as it happens, since the average age for authors to be offed by my book reviews is around 80, and the average time for the curse to take effect is around four years. My nominees from June 2015 (on the occasion of James Salter's death) were Joyce Carol Oates, David Lodge and Milan Kundera. Since I failed to spot Eco then those may as well stand for next time.

Here's an interesting long and wide-ranging interview Eco gave to the Paris Review in 2008, during the course of which he inexplicably failed to predict my hand in his eventual demise.

The Dreadful Sordid Truth About Me

Living entirely on a diet of sponge fingers and Tizer, the electric halibut is an elusive, enigmatic creature. Who knows where he will pop up next? He may be coming to your town.....no, hang on, that was the Monkees.